When fly fishing, most of the time, a small hook is used with some feathers or light synthetic hair tied on to the hook so that it resembles something a fish would want to eat when pulled back thru the water. This “fly” has no weight. In order to cast it, fly fishermen use a line that has weight. Once you get enough of this line outside the rod, it must be kept airborne by moving the rod back and forth and gradually letting out more line which is controlled by the fisherman. The line can travel 30 or 40 yards if the “cast” is executed by someone who knows what they are doing. This has also become a very popular way to go after saltwater fish like Striped Bass. Saltwater fly fishing has become quite popular. It is estimated that 5 million people saltwater fly fish.
When preparing to make a cast, it is necessary to pull enough of the line off of the real that is required to make the cast. A fly fishing reel is primarily used to store the fly fishing line when not casting except when a big enough fish is caught and drag, supplied by the reel, is necessary to bring the fish in. It is actually not used during the fly fishing maneuver, i.e., line stripping and casting. If you are standing in the surf, or on a rocky jetty, as in the case of ocean fly fishing, you have to have a dependable way to store and control the line. Jetties have many crevices that go down very far. There are crevices on top of crevices. If a fly line spills into these crevices, it very often snags on something once you try to retrieve it. You end up losing your very expensive fly line not to mention a lovely day of fishing. The same can also happen when fly fishing from a beach with the surf pounding. A lovely day of fishing can quickly go down hill when your fly line spills out into the surf.
One of the next innovations arriving now in salt water fly fishing are longer rods. When you combine these with longer, weight-forward, fly lines, you can make long casts. The longer the cast, the longer your fly is in the water, and the better one's chances are of hooking a fish. With a longer rod, the line can be held up above approaching waves. However, with longer rods and, consequently, longer lines, line control is even more important.
A saltwater fly fisherman who wants to fish the open ocean surf, or, from a rock jetty, is faced with two critical problem areas. In order to have any chance of success, he must keep his fly line out of the surf, or out of the rocky crevices of a jetty. If a fly line ends up in the surf, it will pick up sand and immediately begin pulling the rest of the line into the surf, ruining any chance of making a cast. A jetty is composed of large rocks piled on top of each other. If your line falls into these crevices, it will flow like a slinky back and forth into openings that are deeper and deeper. When one tries to retrieve the line, it usually binds in a crack. You have lost your expensive fly line, and unless you have another spool of line, you are finished fly fishing for the day. Also, in order to make a successful cast, once retrieved, the line must not get tangled. A stripping basket is a container designed to hold fly line when fly fishing and must keep the line from getting tangled, i.e., not enable the line to get tangled. Stripping baskets made of mesh or perforated sidewalls perform poorly in this aspect because the open sidewall construction allows wind penetration. Again, an important feature of successful fly fishing is line control which is just as important as a casting technique.
In order to be successful in the Surf, or from a jetty, a fly fisherman needs a well designed stripping basket. A variety of stripping baskets are available today, but all of them have shortcomings when it comes to the surf. Surf fishing in the ocean, which is full of Striped Bass, Bluefish, pounding schools of baitfish, and where the surrounding sky has flocks of wheeling, diving, or shrieking gulls, and where the waves are breaking against your legs, lends to quite a chaotic environment. One's eyes must be focused straight ahead seeing everything that is happening to make sure of the right timing and direction for casting a line. Line control is very important under these circumstances and must be performed in a systematic manner. The stripping basket plays an important part of line control. The basket must be located where you expect it to be. In order to retrieve the line in a systematic fashion, one must be able to go to a spot, such as the entrance of the stripping basket, time after time without looking. Such retrieval must be done by quick, coordinated and repetitive movements. Ocean fly fishing bears no resemblance to fly fishing from a boat, or on land where it is easy to drop the line on a deck or on the ground. In these instances, when retrieving the line, each strip of line falls on top of the others, thereby enabling the next cast. Normally, in this case, the line does not get tangled because of high winds or by a jostling container.
Saltwater fly fishing is much more demanding than freshwater fly fishing. In saltwater, one is after bigger, faster fish. The fly rod is generally larger. The reel is larger, and heavier, and the line you use is stronger. In general, the casts are longer. As soon as the line is cast, most often, an angler will retrieve the line as fast as possible. This involves bringing back the line in 2 to 3 foot long strips as quickly as possible. A stripping basket must accomplish two things. First, it must be able to hold the all of the line of a retrieved cast which can be up to 100′ of line. Secondly, it must automatically organize the retrieved line in such a way that the next cast can be made without any fouling of the line.
One typical fly fishing basket in use today is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 7,900,392 to Musto which illustrates a folding fly fishing stripping basket attached to the waist of a user. Another typical fly fishing basket is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,182,877 to Burchill, et al. which illustrates a non-folding fly fishing stripping basket attached to the waist of a user. U.S. Pat. No. 6,189,258 to Anderson discloses a free standing fly fishing stripping container. U.S. Pat. No. 5,628,141 to Crawford discloses a fly fishing stripping basket attached to the waist of a user made of fabric or mesh material. U.S. Pat. No. 3,691,666 to Herdwig discloses a fish storing basket made from wicker material. Patent Application Publication No. US 20020017049 A1 to Millett, et al. discloses a multi-purpose fishing basket that serves as fish storage and as a “strip box”.
Fly fishing in the surf is as much about line control as it is about being able to cast. Successful line control is what leads to a successful cast. None of the current designs are considered functional for fly fishing in the surf. They are either too shallow, tip the wrong way when worn, have too many obstructions or protrusions, or not made of windproof walls. Compared to the design of the present invention, all other designs have a relatively large floor that can allow the line to shift position during the retrieve. This increases the chance of tangling during the next cast. Thus, there is a need for an efficiently designed stripping basket for fly fishing in an ocean surface as will be described hereinafter.